HEAT SIGNATURE (POV: Adrian)
1883 Words
The dream always starts the same way.
Smoke.
Heat.
The sound of her laughter cutting through the roar of engines.
She’s there—Luna—her hair whipping in the wind, her eyes wild, her grip on the wheel like she owns the world. He’s chasing her, headlights locked onto the glint of her taillights. The city bends for her. The sky cracks open when she shifts gears.
And just before he reaches her, right before metal kisses metal, she vanishes into the dark—
leaving him with nothing but the echo of her voice.
> “Catch me if you can, Rogue.”
Adrian’s eyes snapped open.
The hum of the underground lab greeted him. Cold metal. Flickering light. The smell of burnt rubber and adrenaline that had soaked into his veins.
He’d built this place to hide from the world—his refuge, his sin. Now it was just a shrine to a woman who refused to be caught.
He rubbed a hand down his face, exhaling slowly. Sleep wasn’t rest anymore—it was rehearsal. Every dream ended the same way: with Luna just out of reach.
He turned to the corner of the room, where the wrecked Corvette still stood. Twisted steel, shattered panels, a reminder of the race he should’ve lost everything in—and the woman who unknowingly owned every thought since.
“System boot up,” he muttered, flicking a switch on the workbench.
Blue lights blinked to life. The hum of diagnostics filled the lab as screens came alive, data scrolling in rapid lines—telemetry, thermal signatures, route algorithms—all of it tied to her.
Her car. Her speed. Her rhythm.
He wasn’t fixing the Corvette. He was rebuilding his obsession.
Every bolt he turned was a confession.
Every spark a memory.
Every weld—an attempt to control the one thing he couldn’t.
His assistant’s voice broke through the comms feed.
> “Mr. Cross? You haven’t checked in for the board meeting.”
> “Reschedule it,” Adrian said flatly, eyes locked on the Corvette’s exposed engine.
> “That’s the third one this week.”
> “Then reschedule the next three too.”
A pause. Then, reluctantly—
> “Yes, sir.”
The line clicked off.
He leaned forward, fingers brushing over the metal like it was living flesh. His reflection in the steel stared back at him—two versions of himself, fractured and cold.
The world knew him as Adrian Cross, the tech prodigy, the investor, the polished face of innovation.
But she knew him—unknowingly—as Rogue.
The masked man she couldn’t stop racing.
The one who bled for her once, and would again if it meant keeping her alive.
Adrian closed his eyes. He could still feel that moment—the explosion, the sound of impact, the flash of her scream before the fire. He’d wrecked his car to save hers. His ribs still ached from it, but that wasn’t what hurt most.
It was that she never knew.
He reached for his phone, thumb hovering over a private encrypted app.
The one he’d built himself—completely untraceable.
The one only Rogue used.
He typed slowly, deliberately.
Rogue: Still driving like you’ve got nothing to lose?
Seconds passed. No reply. Then another message:
Rogue: Or are you finally learning that speed without control gets you killed?
He should’ve stopped there. He didn’t.
Rogue: Tell me, Luna. Would you still race if the devil himself was watching?
He set the phone down and waited. The lab felt too quiet again, the hum of machines echoing the pulse in his throat.
Then—ping.
Luna: You talk too much for someone who hides behind a mask.
Adrian’s lips curved, a dangerous smile cutting through the quiet.
Rogue: Masks are safer than faces.
Luna: Maybe. But at least faces have the guts to show what they want.
That line. That bite. That fire. He could hear her voice in it—defiant, reckless, alive.
Adrian exhaled through a low laugh, leaning back in his chair. “Careful, Luna,” he murmured to no one. “You’re starting to sound like me.”
His gaze drifted to the Corvette again. The skeleton of it gleamed in the half-light, half-built, half-destroyed—just like him.
He picked up a wrench and started tightening a bolt, each click ringing like a heartbeat.
She thought he was a sponsor.
She thought Rogue was just another ghost in the underground.
But she didn’t know that every track she entered, every rival she faced, every sabotage attempt—he was already there, one step ahead, erasing danger before it reached her.
He wasn’t protecting her because he wanted to.
He was protecting her because he couldn’t not.
Because every time she raced, his world tilted toward chaos—and he needed her alive to make sense of it.
Another message came through.
Luna: So what’s the game this time? Another “test”?
He paused before replying.
Rogue: Consider it a lesson in loyalty.
Luna: To who?
He smiled faintly, typing—
Rogue: To yourself.
The phone buzzed again almost instantly, but he didn’t look. He just set it on the workbench and let the hum of the engines fill the space.
Somewhere between the silence and the static, Adrian realized he wasn’t sure where he ended and Rogue began anymore.
Maybe the mask had never been a disguise.
Maybe it was the only way to show who he really was.
He looked at the wrecked car, the reflection of firelight flickering across the chrome.
> “You’re getting too close,” he whispered to himself. “And I don’t know if I want you to stop.”
The phone vibrated again.
He shouldn’t have looked. He always told himself that.
But her name—Luna—lit up the screen like a warning flare in a dark ocean.
And Adrian had never been good at steering away from danger.
Luna: You keep talking about loyalty, Rogue. But you don’t even show your face.
Luna: Tell me—what are you really loyal to?
He stared at the words, jaw tightening.
His reflection flickered in the black mirror of the phone — half-CEO, half-shadow.
He typed slowly:
Rogue: To the one who still races when everyone tells her to quit.
For a long minute, no reply.
Only the steady hum of the lab, the faint buzz of fluorescent lights, and his heartbeat syncing with the rhythmic pulse of the machines.
Then —
Luna: You talk like you know me.
Rogue: Maybe I do.
Luna: Then tell me my story, masked man.
Rogue: You don’t need me to. You live it every night.
A pause. Then—
Luna: You sound obsessed.
He let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “You have no idea.”
---
Adrian pushed his chair back, standing. The screens on the wall glowed with data from the underground feed — Luna’s recent races, live cams from garages, telemetry from her Mustang. Every pixel was a heartbeat. Every statistic, a pulse.
He zoomed in on one of the feeds — Luna in her garage, grease on her cheek, her hoodie falling off one shoulder as she worked under the hood. Music blared faintly in the background — something fast, something messy, something her.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He shouldn’t be watching this.
He knew that.
But his brain, logical and engineered for precision, couldn’t stop analyzing her — every move, every twitch of her fingers, every time she bit her lip in focus.
He whispered, almost unconsciously:
> “You drive like you belong to me.”
The words hung in the air, heavy, wrong—and too true.
He remembered her voice from their last argument at Cross Tech—how she’d stood inches from him, chin tilted up, daring, furious.
> “You don’t just watch engines, Cross. You study people like blueprints.”
She had no idea how close she’d been to the truth.
No idea that her sponsor and her rival were the same man.
Adrian moved closer to the Corvette, resting both palms on the cool metal.
His mind flashed back to the explosion, to the fire that should’ve ended her. The memory burned brighter than any nightmare.
That was the moment something inside him shifted — from curiosity, to protectiveness, to obsession so deep it scared him.
He wasn’t sure he was saving her anymore.
Maybe he was just trying to own the one thing he couldn’t control.
Another ping.
Luna: Why do you care if I crash, Rogue? What’s in it for you?
His throat went dry.
He typed, and erased, and typed again.
Rogue: Maybe I like watching you win.
He paused, then added—
Rogue: Maybe I like knowing you’re still alive.
Luna: That’s not an answer.
Rogue: It’s the only one you’ll get.
He set the phone down hard on the workbench, breathing unsteady.
The air in the lab felt charged, too thick to swallow.
He turned, pacing—past the Corvette, past the holographic screens displaying her lap times, past the blueprint of the experimental engine that started all of this.
Her data was everywhere. Her name coded into every variable. Her heat signature recorded on every thermal scan of every race.
It wasn’t analysis anymore.
It was worship.
He stopped at the glass wall overlooking the city. Manhattan sprawled below, glittering like a living machine.
Somewhere out there, she was laughing. Racing. Tuning her Mustang under flickering lights.
Completely unaware that the man funding her sponsorship, rebuilding her rival car, and haunting her inbox was the same one whose pulse quickened every time she pressed the gas.
He pressed his forehead against the glass.
The reflection looking back at him wasn’t Adrian Cross, CEO of Cross Tech.
It wasn’t Rogue, either.
It was something in between — a man stretched between reason and ruin.
His phone buzzed again.
One final message.
Luna: If you’re testing loyalty, maybe you should ask yourself what side you’re really on.
He stared at it for a long time, his lips parting in a quiet exhale.
Then he typed:
Rogue: There are no sides on the road, Luna. Only speed. Only survival.
She left him on read.
He slipped the phone into his pocket, exhaling. “Fair enough.”
Adrian turned back to his workbench and reached for his gloves. His knuckles were still raw from the last weld, but he didn’t care. He grabbed a rag, wiped the grease from his palms, then leaned over the half-finished Corvette.
“Let’s finish this,” he muttered, the engine gleaming beneath him like a dark promise.
Each part he touched was a vow he’d never speak aloud.
Each spark was a pulse of something forbidden.
When the engine finally roared to life, the sound was low, violent, alive.
Adrian smiled faintly.
The mask was waiting on the shelf beside him — matte black, untouched since the night of the explosion.
He picked it up, brushing his thumb along the edge.
> “You wanted loyalty,” he murmured. “You’ll get it.”
Then, softer, under his breath—
> “Even if it destroys us both.”
- Writer
